Erlach Court Part 31

He says nothing. He is very pale, and his hands tremble as he folds the letter and puts it away in his desk. A distressing, paralyzing sensation overpowers him. For a moment he sits motionless at his writing-table, his elbows resting upon it, his head in his hands.

Suddenly he springs to his feet.

"'Tis a crime! I must prevent it!" The next moment he slays his zeal with a smile. He prevent? And how? Shall he, like his namesake in the opera, rush in at the moment when the betrothal is going on and shout out his veto? And what is it to him if Stella chooses to lead a wealthy, brilliant existence beside an unloved husband? No one forces her to do so.

Meanwhile, the door of his room opens, and with the familiarity of an old comrade the captain enters.

"Will you not play a game of billiards with me, Edgar, before I drive out?" he asks.

Rohritz declares himself ready for a game.

CHAPTER XXIX.

A STORM AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.

The billiard-table is in the library, a long, narrow room, with a vast deal of old-fashioned learning enclosed in tall, glazed bookcases. In a metal cage between the windows swings a gray parrot with a red head, screaming monotonously, "Rascal! rascal!" The afternoon sun gleams upon the gla.s.s of the bookcases; the whole room is filled with blue-gray smoke, and looks very comfortable. The gentlemen are both excellent billiard-players, only Edgar is a little out of practice. Leaning on his cue, he is just contemplating with admiration a bold stroke of his friend's, when Freddy, quite beside himself, rushes into the room and into his father's arms.

"Why, what is it? what is the matter, old fellow?" the captain says, stroking his cheek kindly.

"Os--ostler Frank----" Freddy begins, but without another word he bursts into a fresh howl.

Startled by such sounds of woe from her son, Katrine hurries in, to find the captain seated in a huge leather arm-chair, the boy between his knees, vainly endeavouring to soothe him. Rohritz stands half smiling, half sympathetically, beside them, chalking his cue, while the parrot rattles at the bars of his cage and tries to out-shriek Freddy.

"What has happened? Has he hurt himself? What is the matter?" Katrine asks, in great agitation.

"N--n--no!" sobs Freddy, his fingers in his eyes, and the corners of his mouth terribly depressed; "but os--ostler Frank----"

Ostler Frank is the second coachman and Freddy's personal friend.

"Ostler Frank is an a.s.s!" exclaims the captain, beginning to trace the connection of ideas in his son's mind; "an a.s.s. You must not let him frighten you."

"What did he tell you?" asks Katrine, standing beside her husband. "How did he frighten you? He has not dared to tell you a ghost-story? I expressly forbade it."

"Oh, no, Katrine: 'tis all about some stupid nonsense, not worth speaking of," replies the captain,--"a mere nothing."

"I should like to know what it is, however," Katrine says, growing more uneasy.

"He--told--me--papa must fight a duel; and when--they--fight a duel--they are killed!" Freddy screams, in despair, nearly throttling his father in his affection and terror.

"I should really be glad to have some intelligible explanation of the matter," Katrine says, with dignity.

"Oh, it is the merest trifle," the captain rejoins, changing colour, and tugging at his moustache.

"The affair is very simple, madame," Rohritz interposes. "Les felt it his duty, lately,--the day before yesterday, in fact,--to chastise an impertinent scoundrel in Hradnyk, and has conscientiously kept at home since, awaiting the fellow's challenge,--of course in vain. What he should have done would have been to emphasize in a note the box on the ear he administered."

"Yes, that's true," says the captain: "it is a pity that it did not occur to me."

Freddy has gradually subsided. As during his tearful misery he has done a great deal of rubbing at his eyes with inky fingers, his cheeks are now streaked with black, and he is sent off by his mother with a smile, in charge of a servant, to be washed.

"Might I be informed," she asks, after the door has closed upon the child, and with a rather mistrustful glance at her husband, "what the individual at Hradnyk did to provoke the chastis.e.m.e.nt in question?"

"'Tis not worth the telling, Katrine," stammers the captain. "Why should you care to know anything about it?"

"You are very wrong, Les, to make any secret of it," Rohritz interposes. "The scoundrel undertook to use certain expressions which irritated Les, with regard to you, madame."

"With regard to me?" Katrine exclaims, with a contemptuous curl of her lip. "What could any one say about me?"

"What, indeed?" the captain repeats. "Well, I will tell you all about it some time when we are alone, if you insist upon it. It was a silly affair altogether, but I took the matter to heart."

"You Hotspur!" Katrine laughs.

Rohritz has just turned to slip out of the room and leave the pair to a reconciliatory _tete-a-tete_, when the door opens, and a servant announces that the sleigh is ready.

"Where are you going?" Katrine asks, hastily, in an altered tone, as the servant withdraws.

"I was going to Glockenstein, to take the 'Maitre de Forges' to the gra.s.s-widow; she asked me for it yesterday; but if you wish, Katrine, I will stay at home."

"If I wish," Katrine coldly repeats. "Since when have I attempted to interfere in any way with your innocent amus.e.m.e.nts?"

"I only thought----you have sometimes seemed to me a little jealous of the gra.s.s-widow."

Rohritz could have boxed his friend's ears for his want of tact.

Katrine's aristocratic features take on an indescribably haughty and contemptuous expression.

"Jealous?--I?" she rejoins, with cutting severity, adding, with a shrug, "on the contrary, I am glad to have another woman relieve me of the trouble of entertaining you."

Tame submission to such words from his wife, and before a witness, is not the part of a hot-blooded soldier like Jack Leskjewitsch.

"Adieu, Rohritz!" he says, and, with a low bow to his wife, he leaves the room.

For an instant Katrine seems about to run after him and bring him back.

She takes one step towards the door, then pauses undecided. The sharp, shrill sound of sleigh-h.e.l.ls rises from without through the wintry silence: the sleigh has driven off. Katrine goes to the window to look after it. With lightning speed it glides along, the centre of a bluish, sparkling cloud of snow-particles whirled aloft by the trampling horses. It is out of sight almost immediately.

Her head bent, Katrine turns from the window, and leaves the room with lagging steps.

The _menu_ for dinner comprises the captain's favourite dish of roast pheasants, but six o'clock strikes and the master of the house has not yet arrived at home.

"Would it not be better to postpone the dinner a little for to-day?"

Katrine asks Rohritz, for form's sake. They wait one hour,--two hours: the captain does not appear. At last Katrine orders dinner to be served. Unable to eat a morsel, she sits with an empty plate before her, hardly speaking a word.

The meal is over, coffee has been served, Freddy has played three games of cards with his tutor and then disappeared with a very sleepy face.